WiMAX technology has been developed rapidly in recent years due its advantages in bandwidth and convenience of building wireless network, especially in data application field including data transmission bearer and data access. WiMAX technology products in commercial field mainly comprise data card and CPE access products due to its features.
Currently, there are many providers providing various commercial WiMAX chips with different interfaces including USB interface, MII (Media Independent Interface) interface, SDIO (Secure Digital Input/output) interface and PCMCIA interface. MII interface has been widely applied to network devices due to its flexibility, by which, WiMAX chips can be easily connected to various network devices.
Currently, the connection mode of WiMAX CPE based on MII interface is shown in FIG. 1, wherein a WiMAX access module connects to and communicates with a network processor via MII interface, while the network processor provides another MII interface connecting to the NetPHY and being converted into a standard RJ45 for communicating with external network device. This structure has two disadvantages, 1) the network processor in the CPE being required to have two separate MII interfaces; 2) poor extensibility, which results in a substantial modification of scheme when the user wants to provide a plurality of network interfaces.